Unlock the secret of the Advent calendar. It’s more than just wine and chocolate
“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere you go.”
As I inspect my purchases in the grocery aisle and I begin to realize that the next month or so will feature an endless musical and visual display of North America’s devotion to the Christmas season. “It’s the most wonderful time of the year!” And while those lyrics may ring true for many, too often I find that my peers are “over” Christmas before December even rolls around.
As a Christian, it is in these moments that I often wish I could gift my friends the secret of Advent. While few consider Advent an actual “holiday,” I would argue that it is the most wonder-restoring, oft-missed component of the Christmas season.
When Christmas (really) begins
For many, Christmas means food, gifts, a beautifully decorated tree, family get-togethers, and perhaps a traditional service or two. For me, Christmas is an approximately 30-day season. It doesn’t begin with gifts, a large meal, or even Christmas Eve—“when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.”
It begins with the lighting of that first Advent candle.
Invite the light
The word Advent is derived from the Latin word adventus, or “arrival.” Culminating in the Christmas service and beginning three Sundays prior, Advent is a time of anticipation and longing for the Christ Child. Each Sunday, a candle is lit.
Many congregations place this lit candle on a wreath. Each week, a new wick is lit, first one, then two, then three, and finally four. Each light represents a different theme: Hope, Love, Joy and Peace. These candles also anticipate the arrival of Jesus—coming to earth as a baby, born to Mary and Joseph in a humble stable, as a powerful light to overcome darkness.
Each time we light a wick in the holy hush of our service, the words of Isaiah 9:2 come unbidden to me. “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.” And I invite the light of Christ to dawn afresh in my own life.
Lean in to longing
I also think of all those longings of others around me for things unseen, gifts yet unreceived, dreams yet unfulfilled. I think of the friend who longs for a child but does not yet know if she will ever be a mother. I think of the many months I spent waiting with a friend to see if the cancer would stay or go.
This year in particular, I have come face to face with my own longing as well. I have so many longings it turns out. And I am just now beginning as an adult to distinguish them from greed, discontent, or impatience. I am beginning to learn that longing is actually a spiritual practice I can lean into. And so, I hope for many things. I wait for many things. I remember in this Advent season that God doesn’t wait until a story’s tidy conclusion to come and dwell among us. As author and poet Madeleine L’Engel so beautifully reminds us in her poem First Coming, “He did not wait till the world was ready…He did not wait for the perfect time. He came when the need was deep and great.”
While longing begins in Advent, I am reminded that we, as a people of faith, are called not to forget the lessons of Advent once it is over. In many ways, Advent reminds us to adopt anew “a long anticipation in the right direction.” Advent invites us to not only anticipate the crescendo of Christmas—the arrival of the Christ Child who is the embodied promise of the forgiveness of our sins—but to anticipate the work of God in our lives all year round.
And so, if the incessant ringing of bells and singing of carols, the tinsel and trinkets and commercials galore, makes you wonder if maybe your heart is “two sizes too small,” may you remember the gift of Advent—the hoping for things unseen and undertake it in this season, the practice of longing, the wonder and anticipation of gifts yet to come.
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